


Should Have Been Blue

by 13letters



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Setting: WWII, Buy your war bonds today!, Every bullet you buy is in the barrel of your best guys gun!, F/M, Feminism, Gratuital Historical References, Libraries, Mentions of Inexplicit Violence, Mentions of Tolkien, Politics, Romance, World War II, dancing shoes, happy ending!, red lipstick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-08
Updated: 2016-06-08
Packaged: 2018-07-13 01:46:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7133537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/13letters/pseuds/13letters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>In heels today, brown and polished, she knows for a fact her lips can reach the side of his jaw if not his mouth fully for a kiss. It's what she'd done the night before he'd headed back home months ago -- kissing all she could reach:  his chin, his jawline, the corner of his mouth.</em>
</p><p>  <em>He'd asked her to wait then, for him, and time had started to measure in the days he'd been away instead of the months and years that couldn't be guaranteed anymore.</em></p><p>
  <em>He takes her hand. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>"You know I --"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Yes," Shireen gasps, interrupting him.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Or, the Second World War.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Should Have Been Blue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FrozenSnares](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrozenSnares/gifts).



> For you, my dear friend. I love and appreciate you and you're the kindest person anyone could know as a friend and a very gifted writer. I hope you enjoy this, xox, it's all for you!

It's 1943. A seaside town in South Carolina, gulls in the air, salt in the wind, the sky almost permanently gray.

But it's home more than Philadelphia ever was to her, this quiet coast and the lazy sort of routine that isn't tedious when she _likes_ this day-to-day existence too perfect to put to words. She loves how the sky looks constantly like it'll open, how it makes the sea dwell alive.

And maybe it's because it's hurricane season, because these years have felt like a winning and losing battle in WWII and the tolls it's reaved onto their great Nation, but praise, Reagan has yet to be elected. There isn't yet a Marilyn singing _happy birthday_ with the lustful croon of a baby grand teardrop piano, there's just what's left of Roosevelt, the day that will go on in infamy, a sense of nationalism that her Uncle Davos says hasn't matched the uproar and the pride that was the cause of twenty-odd years ago when he was just a sailor stuck in the top-bed of the bunks and biting bullets like praise.

 

This baby-booming generation will grow up and grow bitter, old men will scowl at technology and get away with acting senile when their look of judgment can pass for curiosity, _I don't remember any women having jobs when I was younger_ , but who taught them? Who were their secretaries?

Nylons and red lipstick and heels that aren't made for comfort yet, pearls are meant to show class but God, what won't women do for birth control now? Make-up can get you what you want like a little Hollywood glamour, revered not quite _old_ yet (they haven't lived up to their legacy of bright names on billboards backdropping the stars they are that fall, too) but silk pillowcases are all the rave to keep curls smooth overnight, there's so many standards here --

Somedays Shireen is angry all these things determine value (she's a busybody, she's a slut, she's a prude, she's lazy, she's a slob it seems depending on what it is she wears for practicality), and in office after office, movement after movement, peace rallies and secret agencies and schoolyards and libraries, doors closed in her face as much as she stands firm and doesn't sway.

This land of opportunities is still mostly not.

 

She remembers hearing about just when Poland was invaded.

It was with Davos that she was welcomed into marches and lectures, could swear the oaths of peace and renouncing a war. 1938, and dark the world seemed after that to no prospects, no peace, her father fighting away.

 

She strolls down the boardwalk under a wide-brimmed hat, a loose blouse tucked up at the sleeves, sea air cleansing her soul like new beverages claim to in magazine ads. Apparently there's more than one way to save a life, and she feels the sand stick to her toes, she hears the happiness light-heartedly carrying voices on the wind.

She people-watches and she reads: Austen, war comics, news from the war that's no doubt been edited. She tries to read between the lines.

She gardens and she attends Sunday service with Davos, hoping some of it will sink in his head like seastone and foam. She laughs at his jokes while he cooks for them, tells her how his son is coming to visit -- a sore spot because she misses her family but couldn't stay where they weren't -- the war took its tolls, but hell. Last she saw Devan, he was losing at solitaire. And that isn't a war.

 

At the library, the owner thinks she's stuck-up because she isn't easy to impress, but another assistant, Dawn, she always smells like coffee and salt and roses.

They go to a diner one night they close later than usual and they become fast friends -- Dawn's a little quick, a little carefree, kisses men that reek of smoke with her mouth open and her lipstick still intact after. She tells her how she had a beau that got drafted and and it'd been months since the last letter he'd promised. So her promises, too, well. Grief is grief, isn't it?

She calls Shireen sweet when she helps her home, staggering drunk and slurring, but Shireen isn't trying to be sweet, she's trying to be safe because she saw how a few of those men were eyeing Dawn from inside the restaurant they'd been in. With her friend's sparkling, almond eyes, her pretty face, her curves, they're more alike than one might think -- with the scar on Shireen's face, a lot of her worth to these men too is based on how much they want to fuck her.

 

She's waiting on a bench outside the school to speak with the teacher. Ms. Stein is expecting a baby, she says, and while that makes Shireen pause, work in one hand, a family in the other, this really shouldn't be either or, this shouldn't have to be a choice, Margaret doesn't want to give up teaching all these children just to raise one of her own instead of making this an ultimatum when women, powerful, _infinite_ women, we can do both.

She's just not the one that's forced it, and she's excited, she really is. Shireen's going to love teaching, and the kids are going to love her.

They're waiting inside for a quick interview, though, so _come on_ , Margaret urges, "you're going to be brilliant. Here, wear my lucky pin."

 

She isn't sure who she should have warned of the other, Dawn or Devan, but in Davos's living room with the steering wheel on the wall, pictures on the mantle, the main window open with a towel on the floor since it's raining, everyone's shoes are off, muffins are baking in the oven.

"When do you think they'll marry?" Davos quips from beside her, watching the two sway to the music from the radio on the carpet.

"Three months," she teases, giving herself a moment or two to envision the white gown, pinned up, curled hair. A blue ribbon to keep true with the something borrowed -- a handkerchief, maybe -- and the look on the groom's face --

She nearly chokes on her tea when she realizes she'd been envisioning her own wedding instead of her dearest friend's, with lace and lilies, Davos likely obligated to give her away, but that doesn't bother her so much anymore? All the quiet conversations and the stories from once upon 1916 and beyond, the life lessons and the companionship. She cherishes him. She thinks of him as her father, and it doesn't make her guilty.

Like he's reading her thoughts, the train of them seconds past into her daydream, he asks, "And you? Any young men trying to woo you?" He smiles and it's kind, and she laughs him off with a shake of her head, a wave of her hand.

"I'm too busy for that," she tells him, a half-truth that makes his eyes crinkle and has her snorting.

But then the oven smells like the muffins are ready, and as she's getting them out with checkered oven mitts, the lilt of the radio's music changes to beeping, to breaking news, to a list of dead.

 

Dancing one night, drafting a lesson plan the next, she does spend the better part of an afternoon at the beach when the sun graces this town with its shine. This is still a war, though, but days like these, it's easier to forget.

She notices -- how can she not -- a rowdy group of boys her age likely on break from their university not too far from where she's sitting. They're knocking a ball back and forth loudly, occasionally singing and shouting while a sullen young man seems to supervise them. He's in a uniform, albeit dressed down with his hair tied back, his pale arms exposed and already burning.

When a young man _accidentally_ misjudges his throwing distance and overhandedly lands the pigskin inches away from her bare, red polished toes, she can't help but laugh at the man jogging towards her too smug to be entirely sheepish.

"I'm sorry!" he calls, loud then quieter when he's a foot away. Golden hair and a charming grin, she lowers her book from her face and sees straight through him.

"Of course you are," she chides him lightly, quipping.

And the look on his face, he must be unaccustomed to having something to say beyond _hello_. His pretty face is nice, though, means well, but when his mouth opens, it's not him that speaks.

"You're keeping them waiting," the one in the uniform chastises him. He grins in good humor as the blond bows himself out, and he turns back to look at her, away from the sand his buddy kicks up. "I apologize for him," he sighs. He looks exhausted.

"You really don't have to."

The sun glints off the chain around his neck. He anxiously reaches up and aggravates his dark hair with his fingers. "I am anyways, miss."

"Pardon me," she's just dying to know, she's mailed the leaflets and marched and sworn the words to herself again and again, _I renounce this war_ , "are you in the service?"

"Oh," he says. Like he's startled or guilty, but WWII won't be Vietnam. "No. The CCC, miss. Civilian Conservation Corps, we --"

"Yes," she gushes, "my goodness, I know, I have so many questions. And grievances."

"G-- grievances?" That makes him laugh, but not meanly. Like a gentlemen, he takes a polite step when she stands in her modest swimming suit, takes her sand-strewn hand with his.

"Yes," she challenges with a gleam in her eye. "And complaints." This is like a window, a chance, but oh, those gray eyes when he takes his shades off, the things he must have seen.

"I'm Jon," he says like he means it, holding onto her eyes and just her eyes when she takes her sunglasses off, too.

 

"Tell me again how you met," Dawn gushes, dreamily setting down her teacup with a wistful sigh.

"Tell me again how you've finished that last chapter of that Tolkien book," she contradicts with a knowing grin. She's rummaging around for an old dancing shoe buried _somewhere_ in her room -- the only neat surfaces are the vanity table, the pictures and the small memorials, the nail polish.

"I'd wear a lighter colored hose, if I were you."

"If you were me, you wouldn't be wearing underthings under them."

"You think you'll kiss him?" Dawn asks idly, looking boredly at her nail bed.

Shireen nearly chokes. "Jon?"

"Yes, you goose. Jon with the serious eyes and that smart way he talks. No wonder you like him. You know, you're going to have to tell me if you do."

"That would be uncouth," she teases. And the small victories might happen everyday, rescues and liberations and shipments of food and blankets, but going dancing on the East coast doesn't change the monstrosities occurring in Eastern Europe. Because they never talk about it, because sometimes heartache is so quiet, she asks it while she's meeting Dawn's eyes in the vanity's mirror. "Have you heard anything from him?"

"No, dear," she smiles, wicked and red and a mask. "I haven't heard from Willas in months. Now, do you want me to pin your hair? Do you want to borrow my lipstick?"

And why the hell not?

\--

"Oh, my -- oh, my God! Oh, my _God_!" She's gripping the steering wheel tight in her hands, her knuckles so white, everything dropped into silence here in Davos's old car.

She just hit something.

Not a -- not a car, but what if she just ran over a person? Dear goodness, she'll be a felon, her mama would be so disappointed, she -- she steels herself, because God _damnit_ , Davos always told her to raise her chin, to stand up taller, so she unclips her seatbelt. She gets out of the car but her heel nearly skids on the rain-wet pavement and all her control is just. Just. Gone.

"Oh, my goodness," she whispers to herself, _I renounce all claims to war_. "Did I -- hello?" she calls. Sunset is dark tonight, but glancing back to the lights of the car still bright, her stomach lurches. "Oh, no!" she cries to the man huddled on the road, "oh, no! Did I hit you? I'm so sorry, I --"

"Not me!" he shouts back, so dark and angry to her shipwrecked panic, she's running to as fast she can in her confounded shoes thinking _don't be dead, don't be dead._ "You hit him," the man says, and all wars are the same war.

She crashes down to her knees next to the fellow, trying to remember as much of the steps to aid in breathing to unconscious persons as she can, but he tenses and jerks away from her, and the man she hit. He isn't a man at all.

A great, big dog lifts his dark head from the man's thigh and whines at her, his eyes so green in the light and so pitiful, her heart might just be breaking. This magnificent animal, and she might have just. Killed it. "Oh," she chokes, her eyes starting to burn.

It's ridiculous, but she understands this animal just now, this poor dog is thousands of helpless refugees, he's the pet she always wanted growing up but couldn't have on account of her mama's allergies, he's just _looking_ at her while she reaches out to stroke its fur.

The man's hand shoots out to stop hers, latches on tightly. "Forgive me, doll," he apologizes, manners just so _rude_ since he turns on her like a snake. "Just what the hell do you think you're doing? You don't get to touch him!"

"I--" Inexplicably, a double standard, she'd rather men not censor their profanities on account of her gentile womanhood, but she is a lady. He shouldn't speak so! He's -- he's an ass. "Making sure your dog is alright," she frowns, her voice hard in the answer.

"I already did," he scoffs, so condescending, like he has the gall to belittle her like she's discredited him. "And he's my friend!" And it's petulant, but he seems sheepish enough for shouting when she blinks at him. "Not just a dog," he mutters.

"..Then I'm sorry."

"If you were that sorry, you wouldn't have hit him," and she knows that tone. He may as well say that women shouldn't be driving.

Decidedly, she doesn't like this man one bit. She stands and crosses her arms, stomps the heel of her foot. "I'm sorry," she says, earnest albeit annoyed. "I didn't see him."

"Shaggydog," he corrects bitterly, glancing left to her heels, up her hosiery, along her blue polka-dot dress.

"Shaggydog." It's years of church lessons biting her tongue, manners keeping in her cheek, respect and penance forbidding her critical thoughts of the name. "I know a doctor surely still open, we can bring him there for care."

"You think I'm letting you take my dog?" he asks, just short of mocking.

She can't help herself. "Your friend," she spitfires, but oh, the cruel look on his face. He towers over her when he rises, and for just an instant, she fears. "I truly am sorry," she really didn't see Shaggydog or the man, but now that she really can't see him since she isn't looking up at his face, she _can't_ , his clothes look -- damp. He smells like nature, and there's a rugged looking bag off the side of the road, he has military tags around his neck.

 _Hom_ she thinks she reads engraved the spare second she looks, maybe Ham (how biblical) or maybe that was an _A_ or an _R_ ; she couldn't have guessed.

"I don't believe you," he accuses. He just doesn't sound mean, he sounds sad. All wars are the same war. "He'll be fine," he supposes. "Apology partially accepted."

A glance reveals Shaggydog is sitting at least, watching them impassively even if she thinks his left hind leg looks odd.

"I'd still rather he visit the veterinary hospital," she states. No-nonsense. The urge to stomp her foot again or cross her arms femininely is dwindled, however, since he's still looking at her and likely the left side of her face. She feels her right cheek grow hot, and really now, she's ready to be finished here. "If there's nothing more I can do --"

"You look like you have plans," he interrupts, uncharacteristically (from what she's seen) calm to her bristled and defensive. It makes her feel silly, her dancing shoes, her curled hair, her red lipstick, self-conscious for _vanity, vanity, all is vanity_ , but inexplicably. Snapping her gaze to his, the way he's staring at her eyes, it's silly, yet it doesn't seem he's noticed the scars. "I don't wanna impose, miss," he mumbles. "I can carry him if you'd just point me in the right direction."

A trick of the light, she doesn't think he could be really blushing, but this is like a world of power in rosy cheeks, and she feels light-headed. "You wouldn't impose," she says hollowly. Jon would understand, and it isn't like they're an item. "It's the least I could do."

"Well, you could have not run over my dog."

"I -- oh," she rages, trying to think righteously. "I just.. grazed him a little is all." Please, dear goodness.

"Come on," he says suddenly, whistling low and inhuman and -- Christ Almighty, the second of indignation she thinks he's calling _her_ like that. "Can you walk, boy?"

And he can, Shaggydog can limp at the very least. She hasn't decided if it's annoying or endearing the way he speaks to his animal like he can communicate back, so to say it's adorable when the dog whines at him, paws at his leg.

"Keys in the ignition?" he asks her.

"Beg pardon?"

"You got the keys?"

She resists rolling her eyes. "Of course I do," she snaps. She isn't an idiot nor a reckless driver. Except he is a little too imposing, she thinks, if they're condescending faults, opening the back door for his dog to climb into with his gentle help. He's still at the driver's side when she reaches it, chivalrous and gallant, "Thank you for getting the door for me," she smiles, nodding once before starting to get in.

"Uh," he starts, "no."

"Excuse me?"

"Sorry," he stammers, gaping. Abruptly, without either of them realizing he had until he does, he releases his light hold on her arm and she could almost forget herself. "I'm going to drive."

"Excuse me?" she repeats, snorting very much not like a lady. "You're not. This is my car."

"Yeah, but doll, you've proven yourself as an incapable driver, so." He sucks his teeth, gestures like what-can-you-do, this burden he has to bear.

Like hell.

"Get your bag and get in the car," she orders him, squaring her chin, standing up straighter. She's practically daring him to refuse (he's making her unforgiving and willing to hit him with Davos's car), but cowed or awed, he listens, almost smiles she thinks, with his eyes so blue.

They don't speak the entire ride to the vet.

 

In just a short month, everyone speaks their fears aloud: bombs.

She marches and she mails leaflets, she buries herself in all of the CCC Jon shares with her. It's not much, but she joins a quilting circle the women in her prayer group have started. She sees Margaret glowing and rounder each day, a healthy reminder that happiness is still around and still looks so good.

She watches Dawn eat salads, listens to Davos's grumbling about how youth is wasted on the young, how Devan's just gotta decide its high-tide, high-time he marries Dawn so he can have grandkids. Then he turns like a traitor onto her and asks after Jon, but she just laughs and tells him about a girl he met at a conference in Siberia with the PPU, how when they go for pie at diners and dancing with some of his school friends, it's brotherly, always has been and she listens to him complain about one of his brothers, too.

 

"Ham," she blurts, startled.

The man with Shaggydog blinks at her. He speaks around a mouthful of his sandwich. "Turkey on rye."

"No," she frowns, just barely. Thinking better of just continuing her way out, she slides neatly into the booth opposite him. It's strange for her to remember him, but her face -- it's never a problem of hers to have been remembered, even if a legacy isn't what she wants, if all she can do is to send money and quilts to the war front across the sea and overlook the harbor where soldiers are rowed bloodied back and forth to England. So far away they are, as prevalent as the war is here, all they know are blackout curtains. No smoke curling up from the ground. Dog tags still around his neck. "Your name," she tells him.

A beat passes, and then this man _laughs_. His auburn curls bright in the diner light, his head rolling back, his shoulders broader than she'd remembered. "Ham?" He grins ruggedly, charmingly, and oh, she thinks. _Oh, no_. "Where'd you get that?"

She knew she hadn't read them right. "Your tags," she says defensively, unsure. "I tried to -- oh." As he holds then up for her to read, she leans closer and squints her eyes. " _Robb Stark_ ," she reads, just a touch of embarrassed. "I'm Shireen --"

"Stark," he interrupts again. He dabs at his mouth with the checkered cloth, grinning behind it since he's too clever by half. "Rickon Stark, miss."

"Baratheon," she introduces tentatively, extending her hand. His callused fingers gently take hold of her smooth palm, brushing over her skin before he squeezes her hand. And she starts, like a.. like a spark, she realizes. "Stark. You're Jon's brother."

It wasn't a question. While confused, he's flattered, too, and it's.. it's so easy to half-hold onto his hand, the warm stretch of his fingers a comfort that already feels familiar. "Can I -- can I buy you lunch?" he wonders. Hesitant, however doubtful and hopeful all at once, and she speaks without really thinking and rationalizing.

"I've got twenty minutes."

 

"I want to meet him," Dawn complains.

The skies are gray, the air is cooling, they're strolling out of the large library together when a tall head of auburn hair cuts through the crowd so purposefully, long-legged with grace he hasn't flaunted when her cheekbones had him near tripping out of his seat.

"I've only met him twice," she confides in her friend, conspirational even as she's preparing herself for the third time as he starts towards her. In all honesty, she's not sure what he wants. "Rickon," she greets when he's close enough, taking Dawn's arm for she sounds as if she'll relapse. "It's good to see you," she tells him, feeling like she means it.

" _Very_ nice to see you," Dawn preens.

Rickon doesn't even glance at her, doesn't stray from Shireen's eyes. "I forgot to ask," he says.

"It's been two weeks since we last spoke."

"I forgot to ask if I could take you out," he tells her.

"You can!" shrieks Dawn, giddily turning Shireen towards her and taking the books from her hands, pinching her cheeks. "Good Lord, you can, Rickon Stark, roughly age twenty to twenty-six if she had to guess," she recites, gushing. And Rickon laughs, starts to burn red, but Shireen -- goodness. "His eyes are more sky than sea, I'd say."

"Blue is blue," she protests, her tone like an apology to Rickon since she hadn't said -- surely not, " _Dawn_."

"Ugh," her friend drones, but she waves right out of _Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs_ at them, a clap of her hands and awkwardness in her wake. "Go have fun, you two!"

 

And they do.

"I'm sorry I was so rude to you that night," he tells her awkwardly, walking down a street close enough by her side that she's acutely aware of how effortless it'd be for him to take her arm with his, to link their fingers together if maybe they knew each other better, if she'd known he wasn't so lost in transit.

"I could have killed Shaggydog," she excuses, absently pulling at the sleeves of her sweater. "I think you're forgiven."

His eyes just burst and thaw, though, ice melted into water, and he looks too cheeky, too full of himself when he gazes down to her. "You remembered."

 

She remembers the name around his neck like she remembers the battalion Dawn's beau Willas was stationed in, how Rickon's chains are just a standard measure given for the MIA, the presumed dead, the terrors too frightening to name.

One night, he tells her how Robb placated him, told him that he was fighting this war so Rickon wouldn't have to, a protective big brother 'till the last. How his mother cried when he let his hair grow out longer to bear semblance to his brother, how one awful night he hugged Bran because he was roughly Robb's height and he missed him. That was when Bran could still walk, though.

It's with some annoyance that he tells her he hasn't cut his hair since, some trepidation he admits how he kinda just hiked and bummed rides to get to Jon here, a boat ride away from the CCC in North Carolina because it'd break his parents' hearts if he enlisted.

He tells her he wants to, and then since she's waited all her cognitive thinking life for a moment such as this, she explains to him the concept of pacifism with her feet slipped out of her sensible, supportive clogs, her hair messily pulled into a knot.

"I just think violence solves what words can't," he tells her from across the table. He's cupping his chin in his hand, watching her in a bit of a daze devour her peanut butter and strawberry jelly sandwich. She's so nationalistic.

"But that's exactly the kind of patriarchal thinking that has this vicious cycle continuing!" she tells him, setting her teacup down onto its saucer with conviction, damnit, this man doesn't even know what pacifism is. He's going to be educated even if the school board didn't want her teaching on account of her _uncomely blemishes_. "If fights and battles are wearing opposite sides to exhaustion so there's no choice but to force a compromise, why wouldn't a sane man rather not risk the lives of his soldiers and civilians? Perhaps if they'd talk through it, work through reasons and motives and their problems together to --"

"Why do you believe all this?" he wonders aloud. Quickly, he turns his eyes to the sidewalk ahead.

This is a conversation that's lasted a week, over lunches, inside her car with Shaggy half-hanging out the window, down the boardwalk with him telling her that her eyes are so stormy, that he can swim.

Her father, she doesn't say, she just sees Davos's paternal smile that's followed her all throughout her childhood until now. "Davos," she tells him against the wind. It quickens her heart just barely, how this young man frowns to think she's naming a lover. "He still lives with the First World War. It need not have happened." The gas from Ypres still makes his hands shake.

He sobers as quick as he smirks. "You think?" he asks solemnly, severe as the rain clouds look overhead.

"With contrition," she whispers testily from inside the library.

"My God," he says, with his lack of disrespect to lower his voice, with the shameful ignorance that didn't know what pacifism was. "Jon was right about you. But think of the terrible imbalance that'd result if peoples had no one to take arms up for their own liberation."

"Through riots and brutal police forces?"

"That in an effective, appropriate state, protect them," he frowns.

She remembers Jon telling her of Switzerland, though, how neutrality was written so plainly on the faces in that train with him. Gazes steadfast on floors, heads bowed low in this poster-child land of appeasement.

"Can't you see what violence does?" she implores him, tucking her hair behind her ear, feeling the lines on her left cheek. If eyes are windows, then hers need to evoke and evict all these thoughts society thinks she's too female to convey. But she's gotten so angry at him this past week, bothered by how he debates conflict as a necessity that shakes her a bit, disarms her like his smiles do. "It's nothing short of ruin."

His face changes like he's finally understanding the gravity of her words and the predicament, though, but then in a quake, he's lost it. "I agree with you, Shireen," he grins, like he's looking down at her in the bright lights of Davos's car, awed and contrite.

"..You do?" she blinks, startling herself with how loud she's spoken in the quiet library, how amazed she sounds.

"Here," he laughs quietly, his cheeks pink. Rummaging through his wallet, he pulls out a card and shows her like his brother's dog tags.

"The WRI," she reads, "Rickon Stark." Affronted, she smacks at his arm, her eyes just shining like his laughter next to her. "You're a card holding member of the War Resisters' International! Why didn't you tell me? Why'd you let me go on and on at you?"

"I like arguing with you," he admits, so low no other patron in this library has to quiet him. Like he's embarrassed, he curls his fingers through his shaggy hair and doesn't quite meet her eyes, but he suddenly seems so refined, so.. well. A dignified political idealist.

"What else aren't you telling me?" she wonders lightly, for once not thinking anything else about the unrest in Quebec, her face, the shackles of society that revel Hitler, her running over Rickon's best friend.

"I'm going back to Oggsford," he admits reluctantly.

And oh. Oh, goodness. "You -- you told me that you couldn't read," she says, arching a brow at him.

All he does is grin. "You were going to teach me all the same."

 

Even on the sides of the Allies, she wonders if this invasion of Sicily is anything like Poland and the assassination that must have started this all.

 

"Do I ever get to meet this young man?" Davos wonders inconspicuously, looking at her over the top of his paper and blaring headlines. He's waiting for his son's engagement notice even though he knows Devan's gonna ask his girl to marry him -- they talked about it two weeks ago. Devan's just a coward, but according to Dawn, it's been the best couple months of her life.

"You've met Rickon," she reminds him pointedly.

"Not with you there."

"I think he's leaving soon, anyways," she frowns. And she's so silly, unbidden, her eyes start to burn for this man, her tears are going to wash the dishes in the sink. "Oxford is terribly close to London, isn't it?"

There was a professor also part of the WRI held in a British prison more than a few months ago. No word of his release.

"There isn't any harm in writing the poor boy," he tells her gently. The old wooden chair he's in creaks, timeworn and aged like his bones. Instead of his usually neutral expression, he's smiling so gently. "You're a tough one to live without."

 

"Jon mentions you a lot," he grumbles, half sounding one foot in, one foot out, he's likely the sort that'd walk away if needed, if a woman didn't need him.

"Jon's a dear," she smiles, scrunching up her face when Shaggy noses at her cheek. The ticklishness of his wet nose makes her give a choked squeal, but before she can laugh the sand out of her lungs, Rickon's ruffling his dog's ears with a _leave her alone, rascal_ , and his fingers are replacing Shaggydog's snout on her face.

It makes time stop like he's a sort of magic, like this.. this -- she can't _breathe_ , she's frozen. His touch so gentle on the cracked side of her cheek, it's like he could be holding her heart with how tender he is. "Shireen."

"Rickon," she whispers. Her mouth is so dry, worse than that one time she was sick, and her stomach now -- she may as well be. His name isn't quite a warning, but it's helpless, it's _something_ , it's the fact no man's ever caressed the left side of her face.

And she's being ridiculous, it isn't like he's touching her breast. Breasts. God, she has two, she might really be dying here.

"Is this alright?" he asks her so quietly, smoothing over her cheek with his palm.

And she hasn't been oblivious to how he's never once looked at her like she was anything but perfect, even in the shade of a cloudy sunset, the bright light here on this beach.

There's a hurricane somewhere off coast, it's no more than misting but occasionally the thunder booms and cracks -- they had a downpour for about forty seconds an hour ago (Rickon threw his head back and howled) that has everything smelling fresh. And salty. And it's like he's saying it again, _I can swim._

"Yes," she breathes. To his thumb so gentle on her cheekbone; he's looking at her like she's something precious. And if he'd just move a fraction of an inch, he could be touching her mouth, he could --

(Fuck, he thinks, she's picking his ribs clean, she's playing his heart like the organ it is.)

Lightning flashes, and he laughs when he flinches. His breathing is just as hard as hers. It's not even the closest they've been.

 

Some Tuesdays, they dance.

The first time he'd showed up to call on her, yellow flowers in his hand and a reddish blue plaid bow-tie, he took a look at her polka dot dress and for once didn't say anything.

They'd glossed over the details of their families, religion, apple pie after -- and as nervous as he was, tripping over his feet, stepping on her toes, he lacked the grace he usually had.

Now he's sure, suave, has her thinking to wonder where he finally learned to dance or if she just had that effect on him. He must've remembered his soon-to-be postgraduate at Oxford has to have been good for something; they talk philosophy. He asks her where she was when World War II officially began for the States, she tells him how she always wanted to teach.

The band plays something slow for the lovers on the floor after a lively tune has her breathless and heaving, his face red, and when she suggests they take a break, embarrassed and warm in the fondness he regards her with, he takes her hand. And she leans into him when he guides her closer to him so they can properly dance to the languid lilt of this love song.

His heart's erratic where her palm's pressed to it, crooked safely beneath his, and everything about this is lovely. Beyond lovely. She could float or fly swaying here with him, shutting her eyes and trying to remember each bit of this and how it's filling her up and out from her soul.

"Shireen," he hums reverently. It's a hush against her forehead, smooth with his clean-shaven chin.

"Rickon." She wraps her arm around his shoulder more tightly, dreading letting go already. Even of this memory.

"Would you write to me?"

And she doesn't think of Dawn's tears or that hopeless resignation. When she draws back just enough to see his face in the lights, she's thinking _yes_ and the hope that wrenches in her stomach like butterflies, like victory colors in the sky.

 

When he first kisses her, she's shouting at him and ranting and raving, one little thing after another, a hole in her panty hose, his recklessness, his want to follow after Churchill with the WRI and maybe undermine some Germans.

And that's not why she's mad, heaven's sake, she remembers the late thirties and Chamberlain's appeasement in Czechoslovakia, and the twisted, tired fighter in her wants to ask what if -- God forbid -- he's drafted, would he desert?

She's shouting until she isn't, when he crosses the room and takes her face in his hands and kisses the indignation off her face.

And he kisses her.

And he kisses her, cupping her cheek, brushing his fingers tenderly through her hair, sealing his mouth into hers and coming alive.

She has to hold onto him halfway through it, so weak in the knees and gasping when he breaks the kiss. "How dare y--" she starts quietly, but she pulls him back to her as he draws her in, and it's electric.

Sunlight through lace, the wind in her hair, the sand between her toes, the first she's changed her mind and the last time she regretted it, she can feel the the heat in his cheeks against hers. He's touching her waist, holds her so close to him that they're breathing together now, they're moving together, she fists her hands into the lapels of his jacket and he almost forgets himself.

She's sweeter than anything but he's fire; it was fear that had her angry, it's something soft in her heart that stalls when he sighs raggedly into her cheek. "Shireen," he whispers so urgently.

"Yes," she inhales, needy, airless, _anything_.

"I meant to ask before I did that," he admits, kissing her left cheek, her right, tucking her safely under his chin.

 

"I made you a plate, son," Davos calls from the kitchen cheerily. When Shireen pokes her head in, though, he snarks at her, uses that impassive know-it-all tone she pretends to hate. (She's the one he learned it from.) "He's leaving soon, right?"

"I told you he was staying for dinner," she reminds him, fretting at her lip.

"Not a month and a half ago you didn't."

"Hey, Shir," Rickon calls from the living room. "C'mere?"

She scrunches her nose at Davos before heading to Rickon and the voice he uses when he gets lost in the market or the seaside shops, never mind his long legs could take him from front door to back door in six seconds. Not enough space to get lost.

"Yes?"

He smiles when he sees her, as bright as Christmas in '41 could have been, and because it's so subconscious now, their fingers slip together when she comes to his side. "Who's that?"

An old picture of Davos in his greens, standing tall and undefeated since this was early in the war, his arm slung haphazardly around her father's stoic, heavy shoulders, all the world ahead of them.

"My dad," she smiles timidly, wondering what he'd think of this young man standing here barefoot, stroking her knuckles with his thumb, laying down his coat over puddles on the sidewalk for her. She wonders if what he'd think of Rickon even matters -- Davos loves him. She does, too.

 

"Roses?" Dawn sighs. "Lilies? I kinda like daisies. What do you think, Jon?"

"I don't think anything about flowers," he frowns, looking utterly lost in this florist's shop. "Something pink?"

Shireen wants to suggest blue, but Dawn's just gonna ask her if she's getting ideas for her own wedding, when she's marrying Rickon, if she's pregnant -- and Jon's here. Goodness.

None of those things, thank you. Rickon's gone back to see his parents and missed Jon's arrival back here by a mere three days -- somewhere he won't give the location of, and all wars are the same war, _I renounce all claims to war_ , but she's not sure what Jon's doing is legal. She doesn't think he's a spy, not exactly, but..

Oh, well.

Roosevelt's in Cairo with Churchill, and when they've decided on tulips -- unusual but lovely -- they huddle around a radio together, mugs of coffee, listening for news and daydreaming a little of the future, of ivory lace, Ygritte's laughter, Rickon's lazy, elated smiles at her, Shaggy so happy to see her he near topples her over.

 

War starts to feel just like revenge.

 

 _I didn't know how to say good-bye_ , she reads. The letter shakes in her hands. _I keep trying not to write that I love you. When I told my mother about you, I embellished, and my sister laughed when I said you had hit me with your car._

_And don't tell Jon, but I think she may have eloped with her beau._

The address is from London, England.

 

As much as Dawn advises her not to, there's nothing Shireen wants more than to work somewhere she's access to all the news she wants, information flooding in as decisions are made and tactics are carried out instead of weeks and months later and devoid of the truth.

1943 came and went.

1944 is brought in with a dusting of snow that tastes like the sea, feels like the freedom that could be drawing in so soon. It's a few weeks after the new year that she receives her latest letter from Rickon, one that apologizes for his messy scrawl, the words he might write.

He claims to have been drinking with a friend from Oggsford, one Mister Sam Tarly that he knows through Jon, a lecturer who's joining the war, who speaks with such nationality for his country that Rickon himself is almost swayed to take arms up to defend the hope and the promise. But he's got one of his own to keep, just this semester to finish, conferences to attend.

He writes that if she'll have him, he's coming back to South Carolina in the spring. He says that he would have given anything to kiss her New Year's Eve, and her cheeks turn pink as he merits the apology he'd scripted at the beginning of the letter.

He writes that he misses her kiss. He misses the softness of her lips and the heat of her mouth; he says he isn't a poet, but he revels in how her hands felt in his hair. How her neck felt under his lips, how her smooth skin tasted against his teeth. _I'm not a gentlemen_ , he writes and she rereads, _for I imagine more of your skin. Under my mouth._

 

Because she's awful to herself, she reads and reads and reads and finds the news of an Oxford professor whose life was taken by a bomb in 1941.

 

If negotiations are to determine the end of the Second World War by the middle of 1945, then the coming months are desperate and frightening and angry and Jon tells her about the black-out curtains when he comes back with his hands shaking. He tells her how starved those men looked.

With him, though, is a curly red-haired woman that looks angry, that is ridiculed, that is stuck-up, a slut, a prude, unfeminine depending on the clothes she wears, the higher the heels, the red lipstick, the skirts or the pant suits. She looks tired of it already, this worth dependent on hosiery and self-presentation instead of preservation.

Shireen loves her. She can't help it when she tells Jon to marry this woman (while he has a chance) because he actually tells her where he's going this time. Berlin. He tells her of something called the SOE, too, but she doesn't know what that is.

With Rickon by her side, time feels so slow for them like it always has, like they're not going to run out of it. Ygritte, though, mistakenly calls him Robb since he looks just like the photograph Jon had showed her. Because Shireen helped him cut his hair, she helps him regrow it out, trimming the ends when needed. She also holds him when he takes a walk after that, saltwater against her cheek.

 

"My sister's so proud you slapped me, by the way."

He's so casually accusatory, he outright laughs when she smacks at his arm. "You deserved it!" she huffs, believing it with a woman's wrath, a child's petty scorn. And he did deserve it, not saying good-bye to her, showing up at her and Davos's door four and a half months later with yellow flowers.

He said they should have been blue.

"You gonna forgive me?" he asks her, honestly, walking her to the library to her precious books and a kiss that's gonna collapse the world a little.

"I could have killed Shaggy," she repeats. It's the mantra that prevails any wrongdoing of his that isn't half as bad, but rest assured, if war's revenge, it could be coined justice, too. She'd been mad enough.

"Pfft. You're still his favorite person. You want to do something later?"

"I'm making Davos dinner tonight," she says. When her manners catch up to her, though, all he does is chuckle. "You can come, too!"

"Or _I_ can cook Davos dinner," he grins, such a lion or a wolf that's she's the god _damned_ lamb chops.

And since their third talk when he pretended to be ignorant to peace, instead of pretending to feign how impressed she is, she looks to him dubiously. "You can cook?"

"My mother couldn't cook for me in England," he grins. He lets her stop them on the sidewalk 'cause he's so clever, his tweed, respectable jacket replaced by a worn green coat she's seen Jon in, seen Robb wear in a picture.

In heels today, brown and polished, she knows for a fact her lips can reach the side of his jaw if not his mouth fully for a kiss. It's what she'd done the night before he'd headed back home months ago and unknowingly to England -- kissing all she could reach: his chin, his jawline, the corner of his mouth. The skin revealed by his unbuttoned shirt, a spot just center-right above his heart, so full in her hands, quaking beneath her fingertips.

He'd asked her to wait then, for him, and time had started to measure in the days he'd been away instead of the months and years that couldn't be guaranteed anymore.

He takes her hand.

"You know I --"

"Yes," Shireen gasps, interrupting him because it isn't fear, it isn't apprehension, it's _too much_ filling up her lungs and spreading out from her heart. She loves him, too. "Dinner at five?" she guesses, tugging him down to her by the lapels of his coat, kissing him so quick it's a habit, it's air here on this sidewalk.

"I'll bring you flowers."

 

Margaret's baby girl, her bright gray eyes smile up at her and she laughs her infant giggle with such childlike hope and happiness.

"Oh, no," her friend teases quietly, eyeing Shireen from the counter. "I know that look. You're gonna want a baby of your own."

"No," she coos, giggling because the baby giggles in her arms. "I couldn't," she whispers, but she's mystified, she's half in love, she's stopped breathing when baby Eliza reaches out with her tiny hand unafraid and curious.

The baby is feeling the left side of her cheek with her little fingers, following the marks with wide eyes that sparkle when she must decide she likes how the coarseness feels compared to the softness of the other side of her face.

 

It used to make her insecure. She used to feel inferior, but the staring stopped bothering her when she realized it wasn't who she was. She was powerful and she was confident and she was feminine and she was a wonder, she struck fear into the soles of the men who felt she was intimidating, she was made so much more by the events that have occurred in life that have changed them all.

She turned down a university.

She wonders which side of the city of Berlin Jon was in when It happened.

She applies her red lipstick and she feels like a heartbreaker, like something powerful, like it's her intellect that makes her shine under the club's lights with an essay in her hands.

For just a second, though, she thinks of the few men she's known that seemed to love her _despite_ the scars in her face, but is that better than being loved in spite of it? None of those men ever claimed to love her anyways.

She watches Rickon keep looking back to her from where he's dancing with Dawn, smiling her way like he's gravitating towards her slowly, to her stool at the counter where Devan sits beside her toasting their success with beer, drinking to his wedding.

 

"What are we celebrating?" she asks him with the quirk of a grin, her clogs dangling off her fingers, the sand not quite warm, not quite cool to her feet on the beach.

"Do we need a reason?" he asks, grinning at her and rising up with a bottle of champagne in his hand.

His hair's a mess and his slacks are rolled up to his knees, it's.. a lot of skin, he's grinning at her like it's been days instead of just this morning for coffee. "No," she decides, surprising herself. "There doesn't have to be a reason, does there?"

"Not for the rest of our lives, honey." His smile's so big, and as he steps towards her with his arms out, the familiarity so crushing, she absolutely can not.

"Except." She holds up her hand to stop him, watching confusion muddle his face. "Call me old-fashioned or conventional, but this is not how it's supposed to go," she reminds him, resolving to smile with her hair tucked behind her ear.

His eyes narrow and he bites his lip like he does when he thinks, like he's seeing her. But he always had. "It can't be just this forever," he infers, arching a brow at her.

And her shoulders sag at once, goodness, she was getting so worried he wouldn't understand. "Yes. God, yes," her grin spread up like the sky stretching on all the way to other side of the world, she sets her hand on her heart. "Not if you never actually inquire, Rickon."

"Inquire," he repeats. Almost, quizzical, his smile drawls into a smirk.

"Inquire. Request! Ask," she tells him, feeling this purpose bubble up, " _the_ question. Will you marry me," she reminds him, smiling 'cause they're so close to eternity just in case he missed it.

He just stares, though, watches her considerately until she's worried he's dense, that maybe she misinterpreted all of this. But then he laughs, and he pulls her to him by her dress whipping in the wind. "Of course I will," he grins.

 

He makes her wait three minutes outside the apartment he shared with Jon before she can come inside.

She counts to four before she laughs, expecting him to be clearing dishes and picking up clothes and the like, but when she pushes open the door, he's in the middle of stacking papers as quick as he can. Judging by the meticulous state of the cleanliness of his apartment, the three minutes was just to stack the documents into chronological order or by date or topic or something -- this orderliness is something she hasn't known about him.

It makes her beam as she watches him.

"I'm guessing I can't see those," she says.

Because he knows her, he knew she wouldn't have waited outside, so he's not startled. Just apologetic. "Unfortunately not, love."

The endearment was quick around the corner of his mouth. It has her heart spinning. "They have anything to do with the SOP?"

"The SOE," he snorts, taking the last paper and adding it to the stack, setting it in a drawer. "They're Jon's, yes."

"And you..?"

"Study them."

"For.. fun?" she asks, biting back her laugh at the insulted, indulged look on his face.

"For patterns and -- you know what," he huffs, not annoyed at all, "you can read the old ones."

"How old?"

"Earliest I saw was 1938."

"I love you!" she giggles, plopping herself down on the settee and excitedly taking whichever pages he gives her. "Do you have any long-winded speeches he'd written about why the United States shouldn't join -- have joined -- uh. You know what I mean," she frowns, shifting to tuck her feet under herself.

"Think that was.. yes. 1939. And don't you dare laugh, his were far better than mine."

"Even at Oxford?"

"Oggsford," he emphasizes with a laugh. "And yes. You know my sister was so mad I went?"

She has a gut feeling he means Arya. But pettiness crinkles her nose even when he seats himself next to her on the love seat, so close, _so close_ , their legs are touching. She's never actually been in here before. His apartment. "I was mad when you went back to Oxford," she reminds him idly.

"I was mad when you ran over my dog."

"Oh, my -- I didn't!" she half-shouts, laughing as she smacks at his chest. "Shaggy's fine!"

His fingers spindle her wrist, so tender to the delicateness of her left hand. "We're gonna get married, Shireen," he sighs, so elated, bringing her palm up to his lips and kissing the creases, the paper cuts on her fingers.

 

She remembers one night he left a meeting late after they'd first started keeping each other's company. It'd been a chance meeting, he was walking with a man she didn't know, happened upon the street of the car that had nearly killed his best friend, and told the man to go on, that he'd catch up.

She'd been crying in the driver's seat. Davos had gotten so sick and pale and pallid, and in delirium, he hadn't known who she was.

Rickon had coaxed her out of the car, wrapped her in his jacket, then wrapped her in his arms and held her.

"It's okay," he had said, and nothing was, not a single inch of the world except maybe Switzerland and like, Montreal was doing good last he checked, but he promised it'd be alright anyways, didn't know why.

 _He's like my dad_ , she'd sobbed into his chest minutes before she apologized. And she'd raised her chin and squared her shoulders and resolved herself to quit acting so silly and emotional, crying in the (quite frankly) broad arms of Rickon and forgetting herself.

She sniffled, eyes red, her face blotchy with tears. "Do you have a handkerchief?"

And that was the first he'd called her beautiful.

 

She buys as many war bonds as she can with her father's money when word from Jon finally arrives. He's in Holland, very much not dead, and it's with some sort of hesitance that sounds like an apology when Rickon tells her he's joining Jon and the efforts there.

Time again feels like it's reduced to minutes instead of the years they should have; it's not a joke at all when he laughs and tells her he won't have her become a widow, that he wants for them to marry when the war's done and he never has to say good-bye to her again.

 _I will work to remove all causes for war_ , she pours herself into the Red Cross and the efforts to aid Holland in its time for famine. But before then, oh, before then, she holds onto the last minutes in days she has with Rickon, she doesn't leave his side, she feels their lifetime in full force permeating her soul and prolonging this.

It's when she's kissing him into the couch that the world starts to feel like a train that won't stop, like the Blitz imploding again, she's slowly unbuttoned his shirt and breathes with him, kissing. And kissing.

"Okay," he says raggedly, his blue eyes dark looking up at her standing in front of him. He slides his hands up from her thighs to her hips, so close to the zipper of her dress, oh, God. "You need to, uh." He clears his throat, his voice so thick, his ears red. "Put your sweater back on, Shireen. I don't want to take advantage of --"

"Come back to me," she interrupts him urgently, hopeful, threading her fingers through his hair.

He stands, solid against her and warm, and it's so sweet when he kisses her. So languid and unrushed with his fingers gently cupping her cheeks. "I'm coming back to you," he swears, kissing the tear at the corner of her left eye. "Shireen."

His voice just breaks her heart. It is. "I'm not ready to say good-bye," she mumbles, pressing her cheek to the bare skin of his heart, safe against his chest.

"I know, sweetheart," he soothes, wrapping his arms tightly around her back. "Have I told you how glad I am we met?"

"Yes." It's a whisper, but it's always worse before it's better and D-Day hasn't been uttered yet. He'd feel it against his skin if she cried, so she doesn't, just breathes in his skin and how she's going to miss this when the last time was so painfully hard, one of the worst things she's ever had to face.

"I'm going to come back."

"You are."

"We're gonna have, like, eight kids," he laughs. It just sounds like he's choking, but a heavy breath into her neck, he draws back. He looks the refined political idealist he does when he's dignity and reverence, a kiss so sound it's a wonder their lungs ever worked without each other, they were able to survive this long without their lengthy conversations, the morning coffee, the comfort of feeling so close to home in each other.

"Will you watch Shaggy for me?" he asks, voice wet, his hand coming with his to rest on his chest, the lone diamond of her engagement ring warn against his skin.

"Of course I will," she laughs, or tries to.

 

The letters are pages and pages at first. Long and thoughtful, detailed about everything he sees and hears. Posters and banners at rallies, the patriotism that seems to define the Allies.

His letters dwindle to nothing when she hears the bombs in England have started again as quickly as they'd stopped with nothing but a collective breath to be taken in like a weary sigh and a reminder. All wars are the same war.

 

Months pass by with no word.

Dawn's gaze turns steadily pitiful, but no, if he hasn't the time to write, then he's plenty of work. He's busy aiding refugees, helping those without a fighting chance. She throws herself into her work, too, but not before she does as he'd suggested, going to meet his family further up North where it's so difficult to tell there's a war going on.

Metal is stockpiled, but food isn't rationed, quilts aren't being prayed over, there's no pretty girl crying in a powder room because Willas (and Robb) might be dead.

Rickon's mother welcomes her in like she's her third daughter, open arms and a sweet smile and a scent of vanilla so faint -- it's a trick of delirium, but it has her remembering the perfume her own mother wore. She hadn't thought about it in years.

Arya spends those few days in awe, wonderstruck that Shireen actually exists for her brother, but Sansa is a dear, Bran is terribly impressive as well, intense as he is and regarding Rickon as the baby of the family. It's likely years of recompense having that title relinquished off himself; however, Rickon wasn't jesting when he'd told her what his brothers have given up for him -- Robb and Bran, who would have done terribly well in Oxford, too.

Their father fought in the first war also, she learns, but his eyes go a recognizable empty when Arya seems to boast the glory she thinks the story connotes, so she doesn't question it. She just wonders after Davos and what must he be up to right now? Is he bothering to cook or does he eat out? Does he talk Devan through the trials of marriage?

What she wouldn't give for his guidance right now, she thinks. He'd been her shoulder to lead on as well as her pillar of strength, a helping hand, and as kind as the Starks are, they're only just overbearing. It might be since she's forlorn, but she can't blame him for running off and hitchhiking his way to Jon when his mother renounces the war with nothing but bitter condemnation like it's a passing inconvenience, not a measure to be prevented.

 

With more months of not hearing a single word through post, Davos decides she must be kept busy and Dawn drags her out the nights she can't get away with reading and rereading the letters he's sent from past London, past Oxford, from Rome.

Then she gets a telegram delivered to her at the library, _I'm alive; I love you_ with an _R_ and an _S_ and so much love she feels herself breathing again, even if France is more dangerous than Holland. At least she hasn't his words to read of smoke, of red in the sky, of the sound of the bombs and if he's enough coal and oil to survive the winter, if that WRI card is worth it, if why can't he just come home?

 

Spring bursts in with light and a renewed fervor she hadn't seen since Rickon; colors so bright and lively it almost hurts. Or that's just the hurt of being mistaken for a widow when the sweet old lady who enters the library constantly takes notice of the single diamond and how Shireen's always walking to or from here without anyone's company but God's.

They get to know each other real well in the meantime.

She's so pleased to share her ideals with this elder woman that looks as if she could have been a flapper in her day, strapped shoes and short hemlines, a disregard for the bothersome trouble of long hair and the sultry euphemism of dark make-up and bright red lipstick when it had women sluts, whorish, fast, wild, all depending on what they'd wear instead of what they thought.

She recognizes a kindred spirit in this woman, she thinks, she's always been prone to empathy at the grave injustice of life and the humanity in some that ought to be protected above all else.

When the women shamelessly stares at the scars on her face, she doesn't look curious or pitying or disgusted which is why Shireen doesn't mind the rudeness. She doesn't duck her head either, just lets Olenna gaze like she's sizing her up and determine her value by how fierce this must make Shireen, how she had to have been strong to survive whatever had left her suchlike marred.

 

May 5, 1945, and they say the war is ending.

 

The letter addressed from Jon arrives two days before the letter from Rickon. Bless him, it's old news now, but reading the hope and the promise of Jon's voice carried in his penmanship, it's experiencing the flying colors, the liberation of Paris before it happened, when he and Rickon were fighting for it, when so much was a stepping stone to these many, many victories now. She starts and stops her replies twenty times, wanting to tell how the entirety of the U.S. must know a victory was coming. It might've been decided the instant the first bomb dropped into Pearl Harbor and hastened a war more justice than revenge, the treatises in Cairo, Quebec, the freedom of Sicily, the islands that made up as much the war as the continents.

Maybe it was when China executed their Communist leader, when in a letter addressed to Jon from Rickon in 1939 expressed his disgust at a group of his peers labeling themselves fascists determined the outcry of these dictators' influences, when the world realized these weren't Utopias.

And the world decided all at once the good was going to win.

 

She's walking out of the library with a tote slung over one shoulder, books in her hands, paper tucked away if she changes her mind when she supposes he could arrive here quicker than a letter could get to Paris if he's there.

The streets are coming alive now that shifts are ending, dates are beginning in the small city nightlife, people are celebrating the victory around the world: red, white, and blue staining everything here, bleeding in the streets and decorating the sky, banners wave to say that they won, _we won_ , it had been such a long, long time. The truths of the camps are out, genocides are finished, and the war of justice became revenge in Japan, but the world can begin to breathe again now.

With blue flowers in his hand, that worn bag slung around his back, he's standing in the middle of the sidewalk while others walk around him obliviously, ignorant to all he's witnessed and what he's fought for with more vehemence than the symbol of the broken rifle.

He's in a uniform she doesn't recognize, something of the sort Jon was wearing when she'd met him on the beach, and he terribly needs to shave. His hair's a right mess, too, but she knows the lines of his face and that quirk of his mouth, the relief and the joy that cuts into his smile as he spreads his arms and she drops her things.

They embrace like a lifeline, like it's the rest of their lifetimes with her hands grappling into his coat and his arms holding her up. _Oh, my God_ he keeps saying with her name, stroking her hair, petting her back, squeezing her to him so tight. "I told you," he swears.

"I know," she laughs, inhaling brokenly through a sob. He sets her on her feet and she's coming undone, she's bursting at the seams, " _Rickon_."

It's August of 1945, and the world's been shaken up, it's blown lives to pieces, it's stopped as much it starts again. And giddy with victory, drunken on hope, people on the street stop to applaud when he tilts her head back and kisses her, ready for something so good now, so worn true.


End file.
